


Wintering

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, POV Outsider, Pre-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 21:21:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16104026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: Prompt (paraphrased): Dean is hurt on his first hunt and lets Sam take care of him.





	Wintering

They reek of rotten eggs, an encounter with demons inscribed on their skin, the smell clinging to them like old, persistent smoke despite the abundance of winter rain. They’re drenched in it, almost-frozen drops in their hair and on their clothes. She watches as the younger boy — can’t be more than twelve, if that — lists sideways under the older one’s weight, both of them teetering for an alarming second but then righting themselves. 

“S’okay,” the almost-adult says. “M’okay, Sammy.”

“Like hell you are,” the kid grunts. “Now shut up and lean on the wall for a second while I get the door open.”

The larger one — she still doesn’t know his name — does as asked. She watches as he leans, rain seeping wetly from his clothes onto the wall, leaving his imprint there. His hand never leaves the younger one’s shoulder, fingers like claws, digging in soft and deep.

The rain grows thicker, heavier, drumming against the roof, almost drowning out the sound of what the older boy says next. 

“Sorry, kiddo. So sorry.”

The kid is silent for a moment, and she isn’t sure he heard the apology. She takes a moment to wonder why an obviously injured boy would be apologizing for something that was clearly done to him by someone (or something) else, but is distracted by the drama unfolding before her eyes. 

“You don’t get to say that.” There’s anger in the boy’s voice, too much bitterness for one so little, and it isn’t new to him. “Not after last time. Not after I told you not to go with him again.”

“Sammy — ”

“For the last time, it’s _Sam_.”

The door slams shut behind them, rattling the old walls. 

 

—

 

_Space, the final frontier_ , says the tinny voice from the television. _These are the voyagers of..._.

“Not this crap again,” the injured boy complains from his position on the couch, speaking loudly to be heard over the program his little brother is watching. His hand drops to ruffle Sam’s hair; the younger boy is sitting on the floor, facing the old black and white TV, his hunched, thin little back to his brother. The gesture belies his annoyed tone. It’s clear they’ve done this before, will do it again. 

Sam bats the hand away without turning around. “Quit it, Dean. I mean it.”

“Aww, princess, don’t be like that.” Dean’s shirtless, the gash along his side neatly stitched and bandaged. 

(She’d nearly gasped out loud when she’d seen it. Sam had gone green and looked on the verge of fainting, but he’d gathered himself together remarkably well, a veteran in the making. He’d gone into the bathroom, knocking things over with frantic hands. When the first aid box fell off its little shelf on to the counter right in front of him, he’d looked around wildly, senses on high alert, ready to fight, and she’d felt an immense sadness take hold of her. Luckily for them both, Dean had made an unmistakable sound of pain from the other room, and Sam had fled toward it, clutching his first aid box.)

(She’d skipping watching the twelve-year-old stitch up his brother.) 

“I told you not to go.” Sam, small and stubborn, straightens his back, keeps his gaze on the TV, where a Klingon ship is menacing the _Enterprise_. 

“Is this the one with the tribbles?” Dean props himself up on an elbow, moving slowly and carefully, like one aged beyond his years. Pain destroys youth more than anything else. (She should know.)

(It isn’t the one with the tribbles. She’s seen that one. She’s seen them all.)

“Dean.” There’s a whole argument in the single syllable: she can sense it in the rigid line of Sam’s back, in the way Dean’s gaze rakes his brother’s profile, half-illuminated in the flickering from the TV. There’s an _old_ argument in the way he says his brother’s name. She doesn’t know when the world became a place in which children are old.

“Just. Let it go, Sam.”

Sam gets up, lips pressed into a tight, unhappy line. He disappears into the kitchenette. There’s a loud, deliberate clanging of pots and pans. 

Dean sighs. There’s warmth bleeding from him, his wounded body on the verge of fever, cells struggling to heal themselves. “I’m sorry,” he says to the empty room. An invisible thread stretches between him and the boy in the kitchen, a bond forged by hurt and fear and love, a history of violence unfolding behind his eyes, and she can almost sense the unseen weights on his shoulders. 

Twenty minutes and a heated-up can of soup later, the boys are sitting beside each other on the couch, trading barbs and stealing bits of toast and cheese from each other’s plates, their unfinished argument settling patiently into the space between them like a familiar pet, snoozing, biding its time.

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean says, nudging Sam. “Your favorite, finally.” Uhura is on the screen, holding her own amid a sea of testosterone. 

“Shut up,” Sam mutters. “Jerk.”

“Bitch,” Dean says easily, fond. (There are words beneath the words, she can tell.)

 

—

 

The old heater by the window sputters out sometime in the night. Dean pulls his shivering brother close, wedging Sam’s smaller body between himself and the back of the couch. He piles blankets on top of them, and they shiver and shiver, making her long for skin again. She hasn’t shivered in centuries.

( _You can only unwrap a child once._ A line she’d read somewhere, maybe from a poem, words in which a child was a gift, words in which childhood is like carelessly wrapped paper, torn apart, thrown aside, revealing blood and breath, skin stretched too taut. She wonders where the parent is who’s unwrapped their sons and left them unclaimed, like unwanted gifts.)

 

—

 

A big, adult hunter — the parent, presumably — barrels in somewhere close to dawn, yelling about ghosts and startling the boys awake. He flicks an old Zippo and she sparks to a second death, this one more welcome than the last, vanishing with the image of wintered boys in her eyes.


End file.
